1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a digital broadcast receiving and recording apparatus for receiving a digital broadcast signal and generating, outputting and recording a video signal, an audio signal and program information, and particularly to a digital broadcast receiving and recording apparatus having a favorite channel function by which a viewer can configure a favorite channel.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in digital broadcast, a large number of channels are provided. In digital broadcast of an ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee) system, broadcasts of 100 channels or more are provided. In the digital broadcast, channels covering very wide fields such as sport, news and variety programs are included and there are also channels for generally broadcasting the above wide fields or channels for specially broadcasting only one field.
A digital broadcast signal of each channel is structured by multiplexed digital data made of video data, audio data and program information data such as EPG (Electronic Program Guide) data.
When a digital broadcast receiving and recording apparatus receives the digital broadcast signal, the digital broadcast receiving and recording apparatus demodulates the digital broadcast signal into digital data and separates the digital data into video data, audio data and program information data. The video data and the audio data separated are decoded by a digital decoder and are converted into a video signal and a audio signal of an NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) system, which are an analog signal, and are outputted to an analog television receiver.
The digital broadcast receiving and recording apparatus also generates an EPG (Electronic Program Guide) image as shown in FIG. 7 based on the EPG data above acquired, and superimposes the EPG image on the video signal, and displays onto a screen of the television receiver (OSD: On Screen Display).
As shown in FIG. 7, the EPG is formatted so as to display a timetable of a plurality of channels over a predetermined time so that a viewer can easily recognize which program is broadcast in any time zone on any channel. For example, according to FIG. 7, it is easily found that “sport relay” is to be broadcast from 2:00 to 3:30 on channel 104. Each program can be selected by moving a cursor (not shown in FIG .7) displayed in the EPG. With respect to the program selected, the program contents are displayed in a separate frame and when an operation is performed to display the program, the program selected in the EPG is displayed on the screen of the television receiver. In this manner, the viewer can smoothly make a selection (channel selection) of the program. Further, when an operation is performed to select a program and then to make a recording reservation, the recording reservation of the selected program can be made smoothly.
Conventional digital broadcast receiving and recording apparatus may be equipped with a storage medium such as a hard disk drive, and there may also be equipped with a time shift recording function.
The time shift recording function is a function of storing a broadcast signal currently viewed (selected) by a viewer by digital data and sequentially reading out the stored digital data and decoding and outputting the digital data. When the viewer wants to see the program again, recorded data such as the video data and the audio data are reproduced and are outputted to the television receiver. As a result, when apart of a program is missed by the viewer due to a slight business during viewing of the program, or when a favorite scene is wanted to be seen again, the viewer can again view the program easily.
However, in the conventional digital broadcast receiving and recording apparatus, when the viewer changes a channel in the middle of the time shift recording, the recorded channel is also changed along with the change of the channel to be viewed. When an undesired channel is selected before changing to a desired channel, the undesired channel is also recorded. That is, the recording is made that an undesired program is recorded between the programs desired to view later. Therefore, the portion where the undesired program is recorded needs to be skipped at the time of reproduction.
Various kinds of the digital broadcast receiving and recording apparatuses have been conventionally provided, and there are techniques disclosed in JP-A-2000-287144, JP-A-2001-275053 and JP-A-2002-112186. However, above described problem is not solved by the technique disclosed in the above documents.